The global e-waste market creates over 50 million tons per year with an estimated 3% (1.5 million tons) in printed wiring boards (PWB), also referred to as printed circuit boards (PCB) and an estimated 30% (15 million tons) in plastic resins. The U.S. alone contributes between about 28-33% of the global e-waste totals. The e-waste market is expected to continue to increase an estimated 10-15% annually with the global consumer demand appetite for newest electrical and electronic equipment. Simply put, the world is awash in e-wastes. The result is a critical and worsening economic environment in need for solutions to discarded e-waste products. Globally, the values of precious metals, copper and aluminum (predominant in e-waste sources) have fluctuated significantly further reducing the interest in effectively recovering or recycling components from the ever-growing e-waste recycling/recovery market. In addition, various state regulations aim to restrict or limit landfill dumping of e-waste sources, resulting in significantly reduced incentives for processing e-waste sources.
Accumulating e-waste sources present a number of difficulties in developing processing techniques. Different approaches have been used for processing waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), a term broadly referring to the spectrum of products ranging from computers, printers and faxes, to washing machines. In particular, WEEE are classified into 14 distinct categories including: Large household appliances; Small household appliances; IT and telecommunications equipment; Consumer equipment; Lighting equipment; Electrical and electronic tools; Toys, leisure and sports equipment; Medical devices; Monitoring and control instruments; Automatic dispensers; Display equipment; Refrigeration equipment; Gas discharge lamps; and Photovoltaic panels.
The four major categories of e-waste which are included in the WEEE classifications include: Printed Wiring Boards (PWBs), e-plastics, Flat screen displays (FSDs) and toner cartridges. As one skilled in the art ascertains, myriad other types of electrical and electronic devices such as cell phones, laptops, handhelds, appliances, and other devices are all included within these classifications. Electronics recycling is historically a very labor intense operation. This is a result of the diverse compositions making up e-waste sources. Plastic housings from electronic devices are ineffectively recycled as collection, sorting, re-pelletizing and shipping costs may be twice as high as the costs for virgin raw materials based on natural gas-based feed stocks. FSDs containing mercury provide another example of expense to process e-waste sources. Each flat screen display requires approximately 20 minutes' disassembly to remove the delicate mercury lamps. In addition to the ultra-high costs associated with this recycling process, the frequent mercury contamination from poor disassembly processing and breakage present a huge issue to recyclers. These examples demonstrate that the manual recycling of e-waste sources does not provide a cost-effective solution to the accumulating e-waste supply.
There are also safety concerns with processing e-waste sources. A significant percentage of the recycled polymers contain toxic compounds, including halogenated hydrocarbons and organics, antimony oxides and other polymer additive flame and/or fire and/or fire retardants. Description of hazards of halogenated substances in electrical and electronic equipment is described by Watson et al., Greenpeace Research Laboratories Technical Note, January 2010. These components are formulated in plastic housings and other components of e-waste sources to provide fire retardancy, as required to meet the global UL-94 flammability regulations. As a result, the housings cannot easily be landfilled due to the toxic flame and/or fire retardants. In the U.S. the EPA will not allow smelters to process circuit boards and release these toxins into the environment. Such toxins result from the combustion of halogenated hydrocarbons and organics generating toxic byproducts such as aromatics and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), halogenated dibenzodioxins, halogenated dibenzofurans, biphenyls, pyrenes, and the like. Combustion processes generate these toxic materials which then must be removed downstream of the process and thereby render incineration approaches unsuccessful and/or not economical. As a result, large volumes of e-waste are shipped off-shore to smelters, which are becoming less economically attractive due to high transportation, processing and environmental costs. Moreover, the smelting process is inefficient and a large percentage of metals can be lost in the smelting process.
There remains a need for efficient processing of a variety of e-waste sources. A 2013 World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) patent landscape report titled E-Waste Recycling Technologies identify a myriad of end products and components, including the following categories and descriptions:
Batteries (containing hazardous cadmium and other toxins), Printed Wiring Boards and Wires or Cables.
Capacitors—components making up a large proportion of electronics on a circuit board and contain exotic and often hazardous materials used as dielectrics
LEDs—another common Printed Wiring Board sub-component and typically in a discrete package, these components also contain a mix of material classes, such as semiconductors, ferrous and non-ferrous metals and plastics.
Magnetic components—an interesting class in that these are likely a primary source of rare earth elements, in particular neodymium.
Computers/laptops; Hand-held Devices; Displays; Household Appliances—these topics are the primary “end product” types mentioned in the WIPO landscape. The displays are somewhat of a hybrid source as they can be both end products in television or computer monitor form, or components, such as part of a mobile device, laptop or tablet device.
Telecom equipment—this grouping of e-waste is one of high priority. Driven by the subscriber business model and rapid obsolescence of the mobile device industry, mobile phones, tablets and other devices make up a very large proportion of the e-waste streams in most countries. In addition to phones and tablets other telecommunications equipment is also included, such as smartphones, switch gear, interconnect servers, mobile phones, stationary landline phone and hubs, for example.
Accordingly, it is an objective of the claimed invention to solve the long-standing problem and need in the art for efficient methods for processing a myriad of e-waste sources.
A further object of the invention is to provide methods, systems, and/or processes for utilizing thermolysis methods to safely and efficiently convert various e-waste sources to a Clean Fuel Gas and Char source without generation (and further the removal of) toxic byproducts, including small molecules, including those chlorinated polymers commonly used in these waste input streams. Toxic byproducts further include, for example, VOCs, aromatics and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), dioxins and furans, including halogenated dibenzodioxins and halogenated dibenzofurans, biphenyls, pyrenes, cadmium, lead, antimony, arsenic, beryllium, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), mercury, nickel and other organic compounds. As a result, the methods, systems, and/or processes of the invention meet even the most rigid environmental standards.
A further object of the invention is to provide methods, systems, and/or processes for utilizing thermolysis methods to safely and efficiently convert various e-waste sources to a Clean Fuel Gas and Char source. In particular, the generation of a Clean Fuel Gas provides a desirable waste-to-energy pathway from a previously unutilized waste source through the recycling of tars and oils to generate Clean Fuel Gas to thereby reuse the energy that went into the original fabrication. In a further application, the generation of the Char source is suitable for further recycling and/or use of the Char source for further separation of desirable components for various applications as disclosed pursuant to the invention.
A further object of the invention is to utilize thermolysis methods to destroy (and beneficially not generate any additional) toxic halogenated organic compounds present in certain components of the waste sources.
A further object of the invention is to utilize thermolysis methods to generate clean, usable fuel gas sources substantially-free or free of halogenated organic compounds (including VOCs).
A further object of the invention is to utilize thermolysis methods to generate Char containing valuable electronic metals, precious metals, glass reinforcement and other materials, all of which are substantially-free or free of halogenated organic compounds (including VOCs).
Other objects, advantages and features of the present invention will become apparent from the following specification taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.